Australia police to probe Google over privacy

RachelPannett

(Adds comment from Google Australia, writes through)

CANBERRA (MarketWatch) -- Australia has launched a police investigation into whether Google Inc.
GOOG, -3.16%
breached privacy laws while collecting information for its online mapping service, in a sign that recent controversy over Internet companies and the private data they handle is having a ripple effect across the globe.

Australia's actions come as a number of European countries have said they are considering criminal probes. Authorities in Germany, Spain and France last month said they were investigating California-based Google and its Street View service, which uses camera-equipped vehicles to take street images and mark the location of WiFi networks. It follows revelations that Google has for years gathered data transmitted over unsecured networks used by residents and businesses.

There has been rising tension in recent times over what firms such as Google or social networking giant Facebook Inc. do with the information they collect.

Australia's Attorney-General Robert McClelland on Friday referred public complaints about Google's practices to the Australian Federal Police for further investigation.

"There have been some complaints voiced, and understandably... involving allegations that some information may have been obtained by staff of Google traveling around the streets," McClelland told reporters Sunday. "Issues of substance" were raised, he said, which warranted a police investigation.

The Australian government didn't provide further details on the local probe and whether it covers the collection of all data for the mapping service, including imagery, or just the personal data that Google has said it obtained by mistake.

A government spokesman said Monday the police have an open brief to investigate any aspect of the alleged privacy breach. The federal police don't comment on the scope of ongoing investigations.

A spokeswoman for Google Australia said the company is "talking to the appropriate authorities to answer any questions they have". It is too soon to say whether the Australian investigation will be any broader than those already initiated by authorities in Europe, she said.

"Obviously I won't pre-empt the outcome of that investigation but (the allegations) relate in substantial part to possible breaches of the Telecommunications Interception Act, which prevents people accessing electronic communications other than for authorised purposes," McClelland said.

Australia's Communications Minister Stephen Conroy--who last month said the Google Street View case was the "single greatest breach in the history of privacy"--on Monday questioned how Google could have obtained the information in error.

"The code was written. You can't accidentally collect this information; you have to write a piece of code to put into a program that collects this information," he said.

"What we are seeing is concerns around the world. We've joined those concerns. Class actions are being mooted in the U.S. against Google for this behavior and they've admitted they stuffed up," Conroy said.

Google acknowledged on May 14 it had inadvertently collected data over public WiFi networks--such as fragments of web pages and email messages--while taking pictures of neighborhoods for its online mapping service.

The company has said it never used the data in any Google products, blaming the mistake on an experimental piece of code that had been accidentally used in its signal-collection software.

Google agreed last week to provide European regulators with the personal data it said it mistakenly collected through wireless networks, a move it had previously resisted. The Internet company will first hand data over to German, French and Spanish authorities. It originally uncovered the mistake while responding to the German agency's request to audit its WiFi data.

The episode, the latest in a series of privacy flaps to hit Google and other Internet services, has prompted profuse apologies. Co-founder Sergey Brin has said the company "screwed up".

Google uses the WiFi data to improve its location-based services, capturing it by driving vans around street-by-street. By having a database of WiFi locations, Google can identify a mobile user's approximate location based on cell towers and WiFi access points that are visible to their device.

(Jessica Vascellaro and Scott Morrison in San Francisco contributed to this article)

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